Famitsu.com has posted an interview with Marvel vs Capcom 3 producer Ryota Niitsuma. Here's a bit of what Niitsuma had to say about the upcoming fighter.

On How MVC3 Got Its Start

Ten years back, Capcom shifted from a focus on fighting games to a focus on action games. However, recently, they've decided to give a try at fighting games once more, and Marvel VS Capcom 3 was one title in that lineup.

Niitsuma stressed that MVC3 did not come about because of the success of Street Fighter IV. MVC3 an SFIV started as separate projects. In fact, Capcom has been undergoing negotiations with Marvel for years.

On the MVC3 Staff

Famitsu asked if MVC3 is being made by the same people who made Tatsunoko vs Capcom. Niitsuma, producer of that title as well, replied that the MVC3 staff includes some people who worked on both games, some people who worked on Marvel vs Capcom 2, and some completely new members owing to the use of the MT Framework engine.

People who worked on MVC2's planning and direction are now in a different section within Capcom but are crossing the sectional divide and giving advice to the MVC3 staff as they continue to work on their own products.

On Characters

MVC2 used 2D sprite character visuals. MVC3 uses fully 3D visuals. The switch was very difficult, said Niitsuma. Trying to directly convert the 2D spite images to 3D models results in models with strange balance.

Asked to name the character who was most difficult to recreate for MVC3, Niitsuma replied that amongst the characters who have been revealed so far, Okami's Amaterasu takes the crown.

In choosing the characters for the game, the concept was not that they'd make new versions of the MVC2 characters, but instead that they'd make selections from the action games Capcom has released in the 10 years since MVC2. The new characters were given priority. However, this approach on its own would have ended up with poor balance in terms of speed, power, gender and other areas, so they used the MVC2 characters to support the cast.

Famitsu asked if a Monster Hunter character would appear in the game (Monster Hunter is big news around Japan at present as Monster Hunter Portable 3rd sees release tomorrow). Not this time, replied Niitsuma. While they considered it, the atmospheres for the two games are too different.

For the Marvel side of the characters, in general Capcom made the suggestions. The process actually didn't go totally smoothly. Instead of Capcom getting to use the characters that they wanted, they had to sometimes negotiate with Marvel about various possibilities. The meetings about character selection were a lot of fun though, said Niitsuma.

In terms of character counts, Niitsuma said that MVC3 will have "30 + alpha" characters. This, Famitsu noted, means that as of 11/30, there are still about 10 characters waiting to be announced. Will some of these characters take the form of download contents? Niitsuma replied that we'll have to wait for the characters' announcements.

On Music

All characters will have their own music track. Niitsuma himself is checking each BGM, and he mentioned BGM was being one particular area he'd like players to take note of. It looks like he was pretty picky, as he had the music staff do five or six retakes for some tracks.

In most cases, the musical tracks are arranged versions of the music form the original works. The tracks for the Marvel characters are in general arranged versions of the MVC2 tracks.

On Network Play

Niitsuma said that tuning the game is taking quite some time, in part due to the permutations that result from having 3 on 3 battles. Also taking up time is tuning the game's network component. Famitsu replied that Capcom has yet to discuss the game's network options and asked if there would be support for six players -- that is, a human player controlling each of the six battle participants. This was actually under consideration in the game's planning phase, but because of hurdles involving networking problems and so-forth, they did not include it this time.

In Closing...

Development on MVC3 took the approach of building a solid base and then adding content on top of that. The staff took this approach because having a lot of content wouldn't make for much of a fighting game if the balance was bad or the network play was no good.

Niitsuma said that with a solid base in place, if there are future developments, he'd like to place a greater focus on the content part of the game. Of course, it all depends on if MVC3 sells.